Persceptions of pre-service and in-service primary teachers about interdisciplinary education

Based on the idea that individuals' needs are different, approaches designed in such a way that students can highlight many different aspects of the activities applied during the process in schools and associate the information they learn with daily life are important. For this reason, an interdisciplinary teaching approach that makes use of the knowledge and skills of different disciplines, provides students with different perspectives by enabling them to interpret events from the perspective of these disciplines, and contributes to problem solving skills draws attention. In this study, it is aimed to determine the perceptions of primary school teachers and pre-service teachers about the interdisciplinary teaching approach. The study group of the research consists of 20 teachers working in the center of a city in the Central Black Sea Region in the 2022-2023 academic year and 7 pre-service teachers studying in the Classroom Teaching Department of the university in this city. In the research, phenomenology design, one of the qualitative research methods, was used. A semi-structured interview form was used as a data collection tool in the research. The interviews were conducted face-to-face and were audio-recorded with the permission of the participants. Content analysis was used in the analysis of the obtained data. According to the findings, it has been determined that teachers and pre-service teachers have positive perceptions that the interdisciplinary teaching approach makes teaching permanent and meaningful, makes teaching fun for both teachers and students, reinforces the lesson, and improves multidimensional and creative thinking. In the study, while most of the teachers used the interdisciplinary teaching approach in their lessons, some teachers also stated that they needed programs and guides to benefit from their knowledge and experience in which subjects and how they used this approach. In the light of the data obtained from the research; It has been concluded that the teachers partially have basic knowledge about the interdisciplinary teaching approach, while the pre-service teachers have the right ideas when they hear the word interdisciplinary teaching approach, and that both teachers and pre-service teachers are willing to use this approach frequently in the education process. The findings obtained from the research were discussed in the light of the relevant literature and some suggestions for future studies were presented.